


A Matter of Perspective

by DrakePendragon



Series: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Citadel [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton - POV, Gen, One Shot, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 20:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15613923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrakePendragon/pseuds/DrakePendragon
Summary: Being an archer in the 22nd century is hard. There's a lot of pressure to be the best of the best or you're just a dude with a bow.





	A Matter of Perspective

Operation Trident is as much of a trap as expected. Helena Blake was making an obvious attempt at a hostile takeover. Her story about her partners, and not her, dealing red sand and working with batarian slavers was very well crafted and emotional.  Clearly, she rehearsed it many times hoping a Spectre would walk by to plead her case to. Chances are she wanted that Shepard guy. He was new to the Spectre game and would probably fall for it. What insults me is that she expected me to be stupid enough to fall for it.

I wasn’t gonna take the bait. She could cry her eyes out to me, but it wasn’t going to happen. I’m a busy man. I have an apprentice I’m training and it’s not like I could just drag her along. This is official Spectre business. I only take Kate on unofficial business. To top it all off, I’m not bulletproof or genetically enhanced or even a biotic. I’m a human, just as nature makes them. I can’t just walk into traps for fun like the krogan or even Natalia does. I’d predictably die. But, when Fury tells you to jump, you don’t say anything, you just jump.

The first base I hit was on Mavigon out in Gemini Sigma. Terrible place to live. Bone numbing cold and really just dark. The base itself was planted on a cliff side about a thousand feet off the ground. Beyond the location and the three turrets out front. This felt more like one of my training missions with Black Ops rather than something worthy of a Spectre. I was in and out in twenty minutes with thirty corpses in my wake.

Second base was on another freezing piece of crap planet. If Helena hadn’t given me the exact coordinates of the compound, I could have spent days hunting searching every abandoned mining post on this planet. Still, the grid coordinates did leave four square miles and sixteen mining posts to hunt through. Something Fury taught me in my first days as a Spectre. If a place has got snipers outside it, it means you’re looking in the right place. The base was in an abandoned mine shaft known for its terrible ventilation and devastating choke points. In and out. Twenty corpses.

That brought me here. Hiding in a dark, musty corner on the second level of Helena Blake’s base. The planet Amaranthine was even colder than the other two, so I didn’t want to dawdle. The bug I planted on the central support pillar was picking up all kinds of conversations. I especially like the one where Helena bragged and bragged about duping a Spectre. She spilled everything for me and never realized I was cloaked and hiding right above her.

It was time. I unlatched my bow grip from my back and triggered the activation switch. The limbs unfolded and locked into place, the synth-cable string shot out from the upper tip and hooked into the bottom one. The system pulled taught and took on the traditional recurve bow appearance. Lastly two omni-blades extended from the limbs for melee combat. Unlike bows of the past, I didn’t need a quiver or an arrow supply. My omni-tool flash fabricates the arrow onto the shelf and I fire it. I could fire as fast as I could draw the string.

“Bishop, go,” I said just quiet enough for my ear piece to pick up.

The buzzer on the front door went off. My omni-tool created an orange, glowing shaft that immediately cooled. I drew it back and let my aim drift between Helena and her two guards. They were all overly relaxed. I guess they have a lot of door-to-door salesmen in this neighborhood. I couldn’t see the entryway from this vantage point, my only regret concerning this roost, but I had to trust Kate. If I couldn’t trust her, there was no point in training her.

Kate walked in, drawing a lot of attention as she liked to do with her form-fitting bright purple armor. 20-year-olds. Always like to draw eyes. Her bow was still on her back and she projected an air of pure civility. Comes from being born wealthy. All those airs and graces.

“Mrs. Blake, a pleasure to see you again,” Kate said respectably.

“I don’t believe we know each other. Kill her,” Helena ordered.

Kate simply raised a calm hand to stall them while the other reached back and grasped her bow grip. The krogan on either side of Helena kept their shotguns up until she waved her hand and they relented.

“I am an official representative of Council Spectre Clinton Barton. He apologizes for being unable to stand where I am right now, but he had an important target to evaluate right now,” Kate explained.

“So he sends you to close the deal? An underling?” Helena asked.

“No, a protégé. He said it’d be good for my character to stare down a few gun barrels,” Kate replied glibly.

“Charming. 50,000 credits was the agreed upon reward, I recall,” Helena said.

“Actually, that was the amount you offered. Here’s our counter-offer. You’re under arrest for smuggling, red sand trafficking, slave trading, extortion, bribery, kidnapping, torture, assassination. Basically a laundry list of traits that belong to the gum on the bottom of the boot of humanity,” Kate rattled off.

“How about… we kill you and then dump your body in the basin over the hill there,” Helena replied.

In that moment Kate activated her fortifications, extended her bow, and disappeared. The pirates started rushing to take cover. Two arrows appeared out of thin air and struck the krogans between the eyes. A half-second later the arrowheads exploded and turned their heads to chunks. I fired my solitary arrow through Helena’s back and she fell onto the barricade in front of her. Her men panicked. Kate, using the doorframe as cover, picked off any and all pirates that rushed her.

I leapt down from the second floor onto a turian below me. He crumpled and I heard bones snapping inside his armor. Above me a pair of pirates took their sniper shots but I rolled out of the way. As I came up to my feet I fired two arrows simultaneously and broke through the visors. A few more shots and the room was quiet.

“That went as well as we thought it would,” Kate said, breaking the silence. I looked over at her using the magnetic recall to pull her arrows out of the walls and pillars. I summoned my and reduced them to omni-gel.

“Take your time with your shots. Don’t fire because you think you need to. Fire because you’re going to hit your target,” I instructed.

“Easy for you to say, you don’t miss,” she argued.

“Correction. I can’t miss,” I stated. I pulled the final arrow out of Helena Blake’s body. Pierced her heart. Surprising, I didn’t think she had one.

“Difference?” she asked. She was annoyed. She was petulant. This is what I signed on for when I agreed to train her two years ago. A teenage girl.

“Kate. I mean, I can't miss... Have you seen who we’re allying with to take down Saren? Biotics, super-humans, super-genius, monsters, and one god, in case you've forgotten the report from Terra Nova. You’re new, even still. You don’t understand. I gave up a lot for this life. I wanted to play with the big boys. And if I miss, it means I'm a dude with a bow. It means I've been fooling myself this whole time. And that's why I never miss,” I explained to her.

“So, what am I giving up for this life? I’m going to play in your sandbox. I will be good enough to be a Spectre,” she stated firmly.

“That… that is up to you. Only time will tell,” I replied.

Kate turned off her armor boosters and started pacing. I didn’t like laying this kind of stuff on her, but if she wanted to be that person. The next archer in the Spectre program. She had to learn real quick. She pushed a headless krogan’s body around a little bit. Strong as she was and even with the strength optimizers in her armor, those body are heavy.

“I am not some chick with a bow,” she told me.

“Good. Now, start burning the bodies. I want to come back in here to a bunch of ash instead of corpses,” I instructed. She flicked her omni-tool and a ball of superheated plasma ignited the krogan corpse. I walked out of the room into the entry way.

“Dude! Look what I found!” Kate called out. I walked back in and caught a bottle flying towards me. Beer. Wait. This was Earth beer. From Earth. Real beer.

“Drinks on you this time,” I replied. She walked over and clinked the bottle against mine.

We took a break and sat on the barricade where Helena’s body used to be. Burning corpses, ashes, to-be burned bodies, and smuggled beer. It’s important in this job to take your pleasures when you can get them. So, right now, drinking a brew with my protégé, even if it’s on some frozen spit of a planet, means it’s a good day.


End file.
